When I came to live permanently in Finland over 40 years ago, people like me were seen as an ethnic anomaly. Sometimes having a different skin color or looking “foreign” meant receiving microaggressions like people shoving your child with a lighted cigarette that burns them, or hearing a perfect stranger saying something racist to you in public.
I know children who aren’t white Finns of hiding from the sun because it darkens their skin. What kind of a society do we live in where children see the sun as something negative because it tans their beautiful brown skins?
The more culturally diverse Finland becomes more racism. The only reason why some Finns believed that there was no racism in the country was that there weren’t enough foreigners or “foreign-looking people” to load off or test how racist they are.
Matters will get worse before they improve.
The hostile environment, political cowardice and the rise of a hostile Islamophobic party are just a few signs on the wayward journey.
After the populist anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* was left out in the cold from the government in 2017, the election blow suffered by the Danish People’s Party in 2019, and now the exit of the Progress Party (FrP) from the Norwegian government, the Nordic region is momentarily free of Islamophobic populist parties in government.
After six years and two months as part of Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s government, FrP party leader, Siv Jensen, announced her party’s decision.
Then Finance Minister Siv Jensen landed in hot water in 2017 after posing with a Pocahontas dress and mocking the Saami at a ministry costume party. Source: bydeposten.no.
Apart from differences with the conservatives, the FrP ditched the government because of the repatriation of a woman allegedly linked with Isis and her five-year-old child who needed medical treatment.
Writes the Local: “The Progress Party has strongly criticized the decision, arguing that that the risk of allowing a person linked to Isis into Norway outweighs the country’s humanitarian duty to help the child.”
FrP’s decision will be interesting to watch how it impacts matters in Finland. The government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin has agreed to accept women and their children from the al-Hol refugee camp in Syria on a one-by-one basis.
Even if there are no longer any openly Islamophobic parties in any of the Nordic countries, it does not mean that the threat is over.
In Sweden, the far-right Sweden Democrats lead in the polls as do the PS in Finland.
In the meantime, the news of FrP’s exist from government is good news.
A good example of how the media maintains the myth of Finnish innocence and its exceptionalism is how it plays down the impact of the Perussuomalaiset* (PS) party on the country’s far-right journey.
Helsingin Sanomat’s Marko Junkkari appears a lot on TV talk shows to give his opinion of current events. He recently appeared on Yle with media researcher Anu Koivunen. In their analysis of former PS leader Timo Soini, neither of them said anything about how the former PS leader was instrumental in giving the far right a platform to expand its political agenda.
Yle talk-show host Heikki Valkaman talking to Anu Koivunen and Marko Junkkari. Source: Yle.
Moreover, neither Koivunen or Junkkari explained the impact that the PS has had on Finland, especially on Muslims, people of color and minorities in general.
It appears that the best analysis that Junkkari could offer about the PS was when the party was under Soini’s leadership.
“I have explained a hundred times to foreign correspondents that the Perussuomalaiset under Timo Soini is a different populist party than those in France and Sweden,” said Junkkari.
True, but why didn’t you give us your opinion on how the PS has shifted further to the right under Halla-aho and what was Soini’s role in the latter?
The only explanation I can find is how too many Finnish journalists and the media mirror Finnish innocence and exceptionalism.
Is the PS today a far-right party? History researcher Oula Silvenoinen has some academic views about this.
Not all far-right parties are the same but they are bonded ideologically by their Islamophobia and anti-immigration rhetoric as well as their anti-EU stances.
A total of 31 ethnic agitation cases were placed on the desk of the public prosecutor in 2019, which is a 59.2% drop from 76 cases in the previous year, according to Yle.
The number of ethnic agitation cases looks even more somber if we compare them with the cases that ended up in court. In 2016, only 11.9% ended up in court; the corresponding figure for 2017 and 2018 was 16.7% and 58.1%, respectively.
Ethnic agitation cases that ended up in district court in 2018. Even if such cases rose by 138.5% last year to 31, it is still only the microscopic tip of the iceberg. Source: Justice Ministry. The number of ethnic agitation cases brought to the public prosecutor during 2016-2018.
Like hate crime and ethnic agitation cases, reporting sexual assault cases face the same challenges.
If Green League MP Iris Suomela is to be believed, she said in parliament in September that there are “hundreds of thousands” rape cases in Finland, of which 50,000 are reported annually to Victim Support Finland (RIKU). Of these, the police record about 1,200 cases of which around 200 get sentences.
Yle blames the lack of funding for the sharp drop in ethnic agitation cases investigated by the police.
“One reason is that the police don’t investigate online hate speech as actively as before,” Yle reports. In 2017, funds were earmarked to the police to recruit more police to investigate, among other matters, online hate speech.”
The number of online police officers has been scaled back. Police inspector Måns Enqvist of the National Board of Police of Finland said that there at the most 10 online police officers monitoring hate speech.
In the face of rising hate speech and ethnic friction, it is bad news for migrants and minorities in Finland.
Apart from funding, an important question we could ask is if the police prioritize hate crime cases and if they care. Sure, we can hear all the lip service about how the police have zero tolerance for racism, but in many cases, some of their actions speak louder than words.
Below are some incidents that eat away at police credibility and their standing in our culturally diverse community:
The national police commissioner, Seppo Kolehmainen, said in 2018 that wants more funds for future “no-go zones” in Finland;
A 2016 poll showed that close to 80% of the police in a survey considered the asylum seeker crisis as the most serious* threat to Finnish security;
The same poll above revealed that 25.1% of those polled voted for the National Coalition Party (NCP) and 24.4% for the Perussuomalaiset (PS) [1]. The PS and NCP parties are the most anti-immigration parties in parliament;
Ethnic profiling by the police is more widespread than believed. A comprehensive ethnic profiling study in 2018 confirmed the latter;
In the light of a drop in funds to investigate online hate crime and the questionable record of the police concerning racism among its ranks, there is only one conclusion: Online hate crime isn’t a high-priority issue for the police that exposes society’s exceptionalism.
Former Perussuomnalaiset chairperson Timo Soini reappeared from obscurity on Tuesday with the launching of his book on populism called “Populismi.” My initial reaction was that I had not missed at all and his round-about and apologist soundbites and arguments.
He states with his usual poker face: “My opinion about humanity is that every person is valuable irrespective of his race, religion, or ethnic background.”
A good cartoon of Soini would be of him at some Nazi extermination camp where he states in his usual style that he is against all the mass killing of Jews but does nothing to stop it.
Former Perussuomalaiset chairperson Timo Soini got his fingers burned by the very party he helped grow. A politician who is a master opportunist, Soini’s comeback to Finnish politics suffered a fatal blow in June 2017, when Jussi Halla-aho was elected as chairperson of the party. Source: Yle A-studio.
He continues: “I am against any self-indulgent speech and such rumblings about people through hate speech and the like.”
Then Soini puts on his usual they-done-it mask: “[b]ut if people are worried that if tens of thousands of people [Muslims] will do to Finland if they come here, their worries are justified.”
The interesting question to ask about Soini’s resurfacing is why the media, starting with Helsingin Sanomat, treats him with kid gloves. Writes an editorial of Finland’s most important daily: “He’s like a passage of Hameln’s Folk Tale of Fables: When he plays the flute, the media follows.”
It is incredible how Helsingin Sanomat offers in an editorial such a sanitized view of a man that brought populism and racist politicians mainstream politics.
Certainly, Soini’s brand of opportunistic does not directly affect some white Finnish journalists in the same way as Muslims and other minorities in this country.
One of the reasons why racism has lifted its head with so much confidence in Finland is the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, which leads in the polls. If social ills like far-right populism and racism are threats to society, why does it gain ground?
One of the reasons, I believe, is naivety. They believe that the way to end racism in Finland is to hit it with a soft stick. Such a strategy will not make racism go away but strengthen it.
Those believing in Hollywood endings to racism are white people who don’t experience racism but speak on behalf of those that do.
Are Finnish policy-makers and politicians naive when it comes to dealing with social ills like racism? Are their expectations of a Hollywood movie ending when everything turns out fine?See the trailer here.
Kenneth Sikorski, a writer who has written a lot about antisemitism and radical Islam in Finland, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as stating that the approach to the latter issues is “extremely blue-eyed.”
“Successive Finnish governments could be accurately described as extremely ‘blue-eyed,’ especially during the last decade or so in their relations with Iran,” he said. “Part of the problem seems to lie with Finnish politicians who truly believe that having a dialogue – any dialogue, regardless of who is on the opposite side of the table – is better than having no dialogue at all. So you can easily end up with the equivalent of a businessman trying to reach an agreement with Al Capone.”
This is the wrong approach. Defend your institutions tooth and nail. Source: Reddit.
It’s time to smell the coffee: Far-right parties that are racist and populist are a threat to our Nordic way of life.
One of the reasons why so many integration courses are a failure is because those teaching them to believe that teaching “culture” and “adaption” are simple matters that any person can do.
Wrong.
In 2008, I came up with this adaption guide for Russians who move to the Kymenlaakso region. Have perceptions changed since then?
Those who study culture like sociologists and anthropologists understand that culture is a complex matter.
Even so, it appears that in Finland, anyone who is a teacher no matter how many prejudices – or tools to understand the latter – can teach migrants how to integrate in Finland.
Thus the aim is not to integrate but in most of cases to assimilate (one-way adaption).
Note: Finland has good teachers who understand cultural sensitivity and have come to grips with their white fragility and society’s racism and prejudices.
Here are some of the questions I have about those who teach integration courses to migrants:
How many have training in cultural diversity and cultural sensitivity?
What is their opinion of Finnish culture? Is it exclusive and exceptionalist?
Who regulates their teaching?
Are the vast majority of people who teach integration white Finns?
What tools do we give teachers to come to grips with their prejudices and racism, which they’ve learned since childhood?
What does integration (two-way adaption) mean in practice? How is it supposed to happen in everyday life?
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* First Vice-President, MP and ethnonationalist alarmist Riikka Purra is at it again. In her latest tirade, she blames the government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin for looking the other way concerning the exploitation of migrants in the labor market.
This is a total snow job. PS MP Riikka Purra expresses concern about migrant labor market exploitation. She would not care an iota for migrant workers. All she and her party want is to keep migrants from entering the Finnish labor market.
If we want to understand why Purra and other PS politicians want to raise a fuss about this type of exploitation, one matter is for sure: It has nothing to do with helping migrants in the labor market.
The PS believes that migrants come to Finland and work for lower-than-average salaries, thus driving down wages paid to white Finns.
Instead of blaming migrants, why don’t parties like the PS state that the authorities and unions should do everything possible to protect the rights of migrants in the labor markets?
They don’t because it is the same argument they use for Muslim women: We want to prohibit such women from using Muslim attire because we want to “liberate” them.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The last matter that Purra and her ilk want is to “liberate” Muslim women so their whitewashing process can begin. The same goes for migrant labor rights.
One matter is clear: Opinion polls, which place the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* as the most popular party, have not only encouraged the party’s far-right stance but given it the hubris to spread and implant with its hatred social ills like racism.
Finland is, alas waking up to the threat of the PS.
In his New Year’s speech, President Sauli Niinstö pointed the finger at Halla-aho’s party, which prompted a knee-jerk reaction from the PS’ head. He stated that the president should mind his own business.
“Online shaming and hate speech are new concepts in public debate,” said President Niinistö. “However, our legislator has been far-sighted. For example, incitement to ethnic hatred and offenses against personal reputation, dignity or privacy of the individual are already criminalized by law.”
Halla-aho, who was convicted for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, wants to scrap Finland’s hate-speech laws.
Finnish white privilege #68
One of the least-acknowledged ideological love affairs written in the Finnish media is the relationship between the PS and Danish People’s Party.
That is why it should not come to any surprise that Halla-aho said in Politiken, one of Denmark’s most important dailies, that he’s not interested in becoming a minister or even prime minister. The only reason why he is in politics is to change the “scheme and system” of the way Finland’s immigration policy operates.
The aim is clear: Halla-aho and the PS want to turn Finland into one of the EU’s most restrictive countries concerning Muslim and non-EU immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Africa.
Copenhagen-based daily Politken is one of the biggest newspapers in Denmark.
Reading code is one way of understanding what the PS has up its sleeve.
When the PS mentions it is against humanitarian migration, it is most likely suggesting that Finland should turn back asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa;
Even if the number of asylum seekers, or humanitarian immigration, totals a few thousand, the PS does not see size as a factor. In Nazi Germany, there were half a million Jews before 1933, accounting for a mere 0.75% of the population. As the Holocaust proved, it wasn’t the size of the Jewish community but that hatred spread by the Nazis;
The PS rarely identifies its victim, or Muslims. It uses code words like “asylum seeker,” “person of migrant background or origin,” “social welfare loafers,” to mean Muslim or person of color;
The PS states that it is “nationalistic” (kansallismielinen), which can mean fascist, ethnonationalist or ultranationalist;
In the same way that the PS uses code to avoid getting in trouble with the law and get away with ethnic agitation charges, the media plays along by giving inflated respectability and validity to their racism.
Even if the PS has a long-range plan to adopt the Islamophobic policies and mindset of Denmark, it explains why Halla-aho is hellbent on changing permanently “the thinking and system” of Finland’s present immigration policy.
